Some people would have time to practise what they preach, if they did not spend every waking hour preaching, as The Dallas Morning News wrote in 1891.

Such is the case when union leaders preach, but don’t practise, the so-called “Rand formula.” Its namesake, Justice Ivan Rand, crafted it in his arbitration of the 1946 Ford Motors strike in Windsor. It imposes compulsory union dues on all employees in a unionized workplace, which labour leaders have turned into a $4-billion-a-year industry.

Now that northern American states are joining other U.S. and European jurisdictions in making dues voluntary, union bosses here are going apoplectic at the prospect that Canadian workers might now demand the same free choice. So they have made Rand into Moses, and his formula into the 11th commandment.

Well, kind of. But not really.

The truth is that, other than the guaranteed dues, union leaders actually don’t like the Rand formula. They have appropriated vast financial powers that the formula never authorized and imposed a form of forced association that it specifically forbade.

For example, according to its 2011 financial statements, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) spent $2.8-million on “political action and campaigns”, $3.8-million on “participation in the labour movement” and $247,715 on a “social justice fund.” That is the spending of one union. There are another 777 unions in Canada, who can force workers to fund politics.

By contrast, Rand’s formula only required employees to fund the bargaining and administration of the collective agreement — nothing more. “I consider it entirely equitable then,” wrote Rand, “that all employees should be required to shoulder their portion of the burden of expense for administering the law of their employment, the union contract [the collective agreement].” His decision used the term “bargaining agent” six different times to refer to the union, which clearly delineated its raison d’être: bargaining — not politics.

An employee was only to pay the union if and when benefiting from the union’s agreement. “My award is a check-off compulsory upon all employees who come within the unit to which the agreement applies. It shall continue during the period of the contract.” Judge Rand ruled that workers would “take the burden along with the benefit.”

But union spending on political and social causes brings the employee no benefit — only burden. What “benefit” did Jewish health care workers gain when the Canadian Union of Public Employees forced them to fund an Israel boycott? Does a federal public servant (whose job literally depends on a united Canada) “benefit” from his union’s recent support of separatist parties in the last Quebec election? These are questions for workers to answer. It is their money. Presently, they have no choice but to pay for causes that have nothing to do with their workplaces.

If union leaders want to fund ideological causes, they should raise voluntary donations like every other group in civil society. Groups like the Canadian Cancer Society advance unassailable causes. Yet, their lobbying and advocacy come from voluntary donations.

Likewise for unions in Europe, where six years ago in the Evaldsson case the European Court of Human Rights ruled that forcing a worker to fund political causes against his conscience, and without his individual consent, violated his human rights.

It is also a violation of human rights to force someone to join a union, according to Judge Rand: “it would deny the individual Canadian the right to seek work and to work independently of personal association with any organized group.”

Yet read Article 4 of the National Organized Workers Union contract with ABC Climate Control Systems: “All employees who are presently employed by the Employer must, as a condition of employment, become and/or maintain their Union membership in good standing.”

Agreements like this are common. They violate the Rand formula and, incidentally, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, which provides that “No one may be compelled to belong to an association.”

In its 2006 ruling Sørensen and Rasmussen v. Denmark, the European Court of Human Rights also ruled that forced union membership contravenes freedom of association. “Accordingly, Article 11 [freedom of association] must also be viewed as encompassing a negative right of association or, put in other words, a right not to be forced to join an association.”

In these respects, European courts are more faithful to Judge Rand than are his purported champions in Canada’s labour movement. Which begs the question: If union leaders refuse to follow the Rand Formula, then why should anyone else?

Financial Post

Pierre Poilievre is a Conservative Member of Parliament for Nepean-Carleton.

Letters to the editor

Please include your address and daytime telephone number. We give preference to letters that refer to a particular article by headline, author and date.

If your letter concerns articles in other sections of the National Post, including business articles that appear in the A section, please send your letter here.

Copyright in letters and other materials sent to the publisher and accepted for publication remains with the author, but the publisher and its licensees may freely reproduce them in print, electronic and other forms.